But, though he had stripped the masks from these mummers in the street crowds, and read their secrets of guilt or innocence, he had not supposed that the people he actually knew could be leading lives complicated in that way. And if Teevan had talked, then Teevan must have been drunk. He would see her to-morrow night, and she would speak casually of her call at Teevan's upon some trifling errand. Yet, when night came again and he stood in her presence, the first devouring look at her shocked him momentarily out of all thought of Teevan's maunderings. She was drooping and wasted and flatly pale. He scarcely knew her face, with the eyes burning at him from black rings. He took her hand, nursing it gently, standing helpless and hurt before her. "You are so changed," he said fearfully, "so changed! Oh, you are so changed!" But she laughed with her familiar gayety, tossing her head in denial. He still scanned her face. Some resemblance there, some sinister memory of her look on another face, was stirring him. He could almost remember what it meant. At last her eyes fell before his and she drew her hand quickly away. "Really, I won't have any talk of myself. I hear too much of that. I'm a bit run down, that's all. We found Florida enervating. Even dad was affected by it and forgot his philosophy. So, an end to that. I must hear of you, of your work." She sat down, drawing a white scarf about her shoulders, and leaning toward him in the old inviting way. "Tell me what you have done--everything there is to tell about it." All at once he remembered. "Last night," he began uneasily--"I wanted to see you last night--" "You couldn't have seen me last night." She smiled in a way that brought out all the weak, wasted look of her face. "I was busy--I was trying to adjust something that has troubled me more than I can tell you." He stared at her, incredulous, believing he could not have heard. "... an affair that has worried me," she repeated, noticing his blank look. Stupefied as he was, he felt a great pity rush over him, an instant longing to be her knight and give battle for her--to be her squire, if she herself must be knight. Yet, if Teevan had spoken truly must it not be a thing in which he was powerless to help her ever so little? A sudden sickness of rage came over him at thought of Teevan. He had almost made a jest of her. He could not talk of himself after that. She could get nothing from him of his own worries, though she could see that he had these in abundance. At last she tired of striving against him and let him go, out of sheer longing for the touch of his hand at parting. He had regarded her with a moody, almost savage tenderness that made her weak.